Page 194 of Vows We Never Made

They probably say Ethan figured out he can do better.

Maybe he’s already met someone else.

The thought makes my heart pinch like a fist squeezing blood from it.

Mom carries the pie into the kitchen, and I trail after her like a lost puppy.

“Why don’t we open some windows? It’s so stuffy in here.” She takes off her tote bag and places it on the table.

Her tone isn’t what shocks me, but that pie leaves me gobsmacked again when I notice the label on it from a local, bona fide bakery.

“Mom—” I stop. Unsure how to continue.

I wonder if she’d have that drink with me today?

“What’s going on?” I ask as she walks around opening the windows, then digs in my drawers to find a lighter before she lights the ancient vanilla-scented candle on my bureau.

Yes, I have a bureau.

I bought it spontaneously at an antique sale a few years ago.

It seemed like the sort of thing Jane Austen would have. Back then, I could still pretend I was Jane, updated for the twenty-first century.

But Jane Austen didn’t get her butt kicked by a fake breakup. She was the one doing the breaking.

Now, my bureau is saddled with bills, books with loose pages and broken spines I’ll fix someday, and all the feather quills and old pens friends buy me when they know I like historical fiction and old things.

And, it turns out, an old candle.

It smells like burning dust when she brings it back over, but it’s supposed to smell like vanilla. There’s a harsh sweetness underneath the burning smell.

“There,” Mom says. “That’s better.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask again.

She waves me into a seat at the counter.

“I heard about you and Ethan,” she says sympathetically.

Well, no stopping that.

Knowing it was coming doesn’t make me feel any better.

“Hey, if you’re here to point out all the ways I should’ve behaved differently to keep him, I don’t want to hear it,” I say. “Not now. Maybe never. I know you’re disappointed, but—”

“Hattie,” she says, taking my hands and holding them in hers. “Hattie, honey, I wouldneversay that.”

“Didn’t you say that about Jake?” I ask. “You know… how I should have been better for him so he’d stick around?”

She looks mortified. “Did I say that? When?”

“You said it again earlier this summer. Back when you were telling me not to mess things up with Ethan. So much for that.”

Oh, the tears are coming in hot.

I press my lips together firmly, so the sting stops at my nose and can’t make it to my eyes.

“Oh, honey.” It’s all she says, but she does the most un-Mom thing imaginable.